Hampstead Pond - Brave woman speaks

[WandaWomblesaurus]

https://twitter.com/roseveniceallan/status/1764345843178512414?s=48

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240302074256/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13146349/How-tranquil-oasis-female-swimmers-line-culture-wars-Bitter-row-trans-women-allowed-bathe-historic-single-sex-pond-comes-ferocious-head.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20240302074256/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13146349/How-tranquil-oasis-female-swimmers-line-culture-wars-Bitter-row-trans-women-allowed-bathe-historic-single-sex-pond-comes-ferocious-head.html

Venice Allan

That's a pity. It does sound like someone felt they had to tack that on.
There's a BBCone, sadly not on iPlayer at the mo, called Swimming Through the Seasons. It's a while since I watched it, but I don't remember any lip service in that one.
If you can track it down, it's delightful.

A lot of the issue here is that institutions include TWs not because they, or users, want to, but because they wrongly believe the law compels them to. Its a mess.

This.

The misinformation disseminated far and wide by Stonewall has convinced many institutions, businesses and organisations that the law says that they have to allow any man who wants it, access to the women's spaces, no matter how inappropriate it may be, because . . . you know . . ."trans" . . .

No. They are women, and want to swim with women. That's a disadvantage.

Excluding some women from the women's pool because some other women want them excluded is not legitimate or proportionate, and their legal advice apparently said the same thing. The statutory guidance makes this clear.

The only way this can be tested in law is to set up a single sex swimming pool session, exclude trans women from it, and then have a trans woman sue. There are some pick-mes who might even help you with that.

The only way for that to make any sense is if anyone can identify as anything they like, at which point language becomes useless as a means of communicating.

This is the crux of it, isn't it. The manipulation of language, and the concomitant legal fiction of a GRC making some men 'women' in a specific legal context.

Yes! I forget whether it was here or Twitter but yesterday I saw somebody making the point that they'd seen someone making these points over a fairly short period:

• I identify as a woman, so I am a trans woman.
• Trans women are women, so I am a woman.
• They're called Women's Sports, not female sports, and I am a woman, so I belong in Women's Sports, not Men's.

And that's where #bekind rather than #betruthful gets us.

Men who have cross-sex gender identity can swim with women (of any gender identity or none) in the mixed sex pond.

No. They are a cohort of men known collectively as transwomen. There is no disadvantage of them as they have other pools that they can use appropriately.

I believe you've identified the problem. If they go in the mixed pond there'll be men 😱. So they must go in the women's pond. But once there are TWs in the women's pond, it's become another mixed pond! Oh no!

Solution: tiny individual ponds. One TW per pond.

DadJoke · Today 11:50

That is, if the service provider choses to do so, they can exclude trans women from the women's pool if it's proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Even if it were in this case, and I seriously doubt it, they have chosen not to, as voted for by their members.

A rigged election, with all of those not agreeing with the premise being excluded and their votes discarded.

Would this be the winning argument in a court case? Or would a man saying he's a woman potentially win on grounds of exclusion from the women's pond being discriminatory, because he is (in the legal fiction) a woman?

Do we have a source for this? I mean a primary and solid source.

They are not women, they have no understanding of what being a woman is, only their own male perspective on what they think it feels like.

We are just arguing about the meaning of a word, woman is an adult human female, and not a feeling or an identity to be appropriated.

You obviously think it means something much more nebulous and ill-defined.

Why do men never have the humility to accept they don’t and can’t understand something? It is so fucking arrogant.

I believe we've covered this in various ways, but to recap: it's OK to exclude him as a man, even though he's a woman, because his manliness is causing an otherwise insuperable disadvantage to someone with a PC (compared to others without that PC), and, as a woman, he is not excessively disadvantaged compared to women without the PC of GR, or compared to men, in that his swimming provision is good enough (whilst not quite as good as theirs).

I do HTH. If there's ever a court case on all this I will be absolutely agog.

OK, I seem to be annoying you, but I'm just having genuine trouble grasping all this. I'm not a lawyer and I clearly don't have a first-class brain. I am trying though.

What really trips me up is when theilltemperedclavecinist says
'He can however claim indirect discrimination on the basis that he doesn't have a single sex pond to swim in like the other men (GR discrimination) or like the women (sex discrimination).'
and
'A TW with a GRC has female legal sex for discrimination purposes (assessed as relative disadvantage, not non-identical outcomes). Excluding him from the ladies' pond is direct GR discrimination.'

So, in either of these two cases, is a man going to win the right to swim in the Ladies Pond?

Why does "gender identity" trump biological sex, @DadJoke ?

And what IS "gender identity" anyway? No-one has yet given a definition of "woman" which would include anything relating to biological men.

MarkWithaC · Today 13:14

Do we have a source for this? I mean a primary and solid source.

There are some links earlier in the thread.

Not annoyed with you at all (saving that for TRAs and Labour for making this mess) just fascinated. I think that right will prevail in the courts, in that institutions will not be forced to abolish women-only spaces, provided that dignified provision is also made for transwomen. This is at issue in the David Lloyd case and the Survivors Network case.

Actually, I can't seem to find the link. Perhaps it was on a thread where this was discussed tangentially? I've been searching, but can't find anything.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13113185/Women-wanting-ban-trans-swimmers-Hampsteads-female-bathing-pond-told-committee-illegal.html

The policy - which has been welcomed by the Kenwood Ladies' Pond Association (KLPA) - comes after an online survey consultation on attitudes to gender identity received nearly 40,000 responses.

But 18,459 were disregarded as invalid, on the basis that those respondents did not answer any questions other than to identify themselves and declare the reason for their interest in the survey.

Yes, I just kind of want a court case (even though I know how difficult and stressful they can be for those involved) to see how the discrimination stuff is dealt with.

I know your views reflect you protected gender critical beliefs, but the law, with exceptions, treats trans women as women for the purposes of access to single-sex spaces, and trans men as men.

It does not. They are both protected characteristics, which interact in a complex way in the EqA. Just don't conflate "being gender critical" with woman.

There is a host of literature in medical and scientific journals on the nature of gender identity. Try google.

@DadJoke

... the law, with exceptions, treats trans women as women for the purposes of access to single-sex spaces...

...protected characteristics ...... interact in a complex way in the EqA

Your second statement is true - and that complex interaction will determine whether your first statement is always, never, or ever, true.

Are you aware of any case law yet?

No. The first statement is always true, the second, plus case law, determines the validity of the exceptions. For example, a support group for people with cervical cancer can clearly exclude trans women.

I am reasonably well versed in the case law around this, with Mackereth being the most recent. Certainly all the cases referred to in the article, plus FPW and Sex Matters. If you know of others, I'll take a look.

The most interesting will be the attempt to force trans exclusion on the Brighton Rape Crisis Centre. The law says that a provider CAN exclude trans women, and I can se no issue under the law with a RCC deciding to set up a trans-exclusionary centre for gender critical women (Rowling has).

This case will determine if they can be forced to do so. It's quite a clever framing, because it doesn't demand that trans women are excluded, merely that there be a trans-exclusive group. It's a wedge. I look forward to seeing the judgment.